A suspect in the Madeleine McCann case died of natural causes while serving a 17-year prison sentence in Devon, a coroner has ruled.

Anthony Woodhouse, 69, who was jailed in 2008 for raping a child, was an inmate at Channings Wood Prison in Denbury, near Newton Abbot.

He was serving his sentence at that prison in 2014 when he was interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives investigating the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann from a holiday apartment in Portugal, reports Devon Live.

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An inquest in Torquay on Tuesday heard that Birmingham-born Woodhouse died of natural causes at Torbay Hospital on March 1, having been admitted to hospital on February 21. There is a statutory requirement for the coroner to hold an inquest when someone has died while in the custody of the state.

Channings Wood Prison in Denbury near Newton Abbot

Dr Ryan Miller from Torbay Hospital said in a statement that Woodhouse was admitted to hospital on February 21 with abdominal pain and rectal bleeding. The diagnosis was alcohol-induced liver cirrhosis. ]

Dr Miller said: “He remained critically unwell but stable until the day of the death when his condition deteriorated. He died on March 1.”

Coroner Ian Arrow recorded the medical cause of death as gastric variceal haemorrhage, liver cirrhosis, alcohol dependent syndrome, and pneumonia.

Woodhouse spent more than 10 years on the run in Portugal after raping a 14-year-old girl, who became pregnant, in Hertfordshire in 1998. He was jailed for 17 years in 2008 after giving himself up to the British Embassy in Lisbon.

It has been claimed that detectives spoke to Woodhouse in March about a cleaning business he ran in the Algarve, close to where Madeleine McCann went missing from a holiday apartment in 2007, while her parents Kate and Gerry McCann were out having dinner.

Coroner Ian Arrow recorded a natural causes death. A representative from the prison attended the inquest. There were no members of his family present.